What we
all hope in reaching for a book, is to meet a man of our own heart, to
experience tragedies and delights which we ourselves lack the courage
to invite, to dream dreams which will render life more hallucinating,
perhaps also to discover a philosophy of life which will make us more
adequate in meeting the trials and ordeals which beset us. To merely
add to our store of knowledge or improve our culture, whatever that may
mean, seems worthless to me.
--Henry Miller